Karen K. Gleason
Karen Gleason is the Associate Dean of Engineering for Research, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering, and associate director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology (ISN) at MIT. Gleason was named associate dean of engineering for research in April 2008. She is the first faculty member to occupy this position, which was created in 2008 in response to the strong recommendation from the faculty search advisory committee for the dean of engineering. Gleason will coordinate the research activities of the school's academic units, centers, laboratories and programs and will also serve as the school's administrative contact person for interfaces with the research units administered by the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Her group's research centers on the discovery of new vapor phase synthetic methods for polymeric thin films. The concept of initiated chemical vapor deposition and oxidative chemical vapor deposition has given rise to a variety of new organic thin films with biopassivation, antimicrobial, electrical, and optical functionality. The approach is to exploit specific chemical strategies for achieving rapid deposition at room temperature in the absence of solvents, features that render this class of surface modification compatible with virtually any substrate. Her group's work on chemical vapor deposition to create ultrahydrophobic surfaces was featured in the November 2003 issue of Technology Review and on NBC in August 2003.
She has authored more than 150 publications. From 2001 to 2004, she served as executive officer (vice-chair) of the Chemical Engineering Department. In 2001, she cofounded GVD Corporation, a company based in Cambridge, MA, which commercializes the technology developed in her MIT laboratory. In 2006, she was awarded the Donders Visiting Professorship Chair in the Department of Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Gleason received her B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at MIT and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. While an MIT undergraduate, she earned NCAA Division III All-American honors in swimming. After joining the faculty at MIT in 1987, she received both the NSF Presidential Young Investigator and ONR Young Investigators Program awards.
